Alaska has decided to once again promote bear and wolf hunting from helicopters in its territory, a practice denounced as “barbaric” by environmental associations, reintroduced during the first term of Donald Trump and maintained under the presidency of Joe Biden despite the criticisms.
The state justifies the practice to increase local populations of reindeer and has designated an area of 8,000 hectares with the aim of shooting down the predators from helicopters.
In 2023, a hundred bears, including twenty cubs, were annihilated through this procedure.
New goals and criticisms following the authorization in Alaska of aerial hunting of bears and wolves
This year, the program allows aerial hunters to eliminate 80% of North American black bears in the designated area (reducing their population to 700) and 80% of wolves (limiting their number to 37). The goal is also to eliminate 60% of grizzly bears (leaving them at 375).
“The practice of indiscriminately shooting down predators in Alaska is inhumane and absurd,” declared Rick Steiner to The Guardian, former professor at the University of Fairbanks, who now leads the environmental group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility (PEER).
“There is no scientific evidence that this massacre serves to enhance reindeer and moose populations,” warns Steiner. “Moreover, there is increasing evidence that it alters the balance between predators and prey in wild territories.”
According to Steiner, the measure actually responds to pressure from hunters, eager to see reindeer populations increased to exhibit them as “trophies.”
More than 70 scholars and biologists joined forces in the PEER group during Trump’s first term, who decided to lift the existing ban from the Obama Administration on practices such as hunting from helicopters or killing cubs in their dens.
The Biden Administration decided to covertly maintain the practices, reactivated now with Trump’s reelection in a traditionally Republican state.
Environmental groups point out that the new boost to the controversial practice comes just four months after a state report acknowledged that “there is no data” to evaluate whether aerial hunting and the killing of wolf and bear cubs have impacted the reindeer population.
The report highlighted that diseases, malnutrition, and the severity of winters are the main causes of the decline in reindeer populations.
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